Friday Morning News and Views

Good Morning Conflucians!!! TGIF!

Of course the big news today is Bill Clinton’s hospitalization for chest discomfort. The latest report I can find says that he is doing well this morning and has been up and around.

Former US President Clinton Doing Well After Heart Procedure

Former President Bill Clinton’s cardiologist says Mr. Clinton has been up and walking around following a procedure to improve blood flow to his heart. The former president underwent the procedure Thursday after feeling discomfort in his chest for several days.

The head of cardiology at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Alan Schwartz, said President Clinton did not have a heart attack or suffer any damage to his heart.

But tests showed that Mr. Clinton did have a complete blockage in one of the arteries that had been cleared in a 2004 quadruple by-pass operation. On Thursday, he underwent a one-hour procedure in which two stents were inserted into the artery to open it.

Hillary Clinton Flies to Bill’s Bedside

She was told about his condition before a briefing with President Barack Obama at the White House. The Clintons’ daughter Chelsea and her fiancé Marc Mezvinsky were also at the hospital.

President Obama telephoned Mr Clinton who told him he felt “absolutely great”. “He said that the efforts in Haiti were too important for him to be laid up for too long and hopes he’ll be ready to get back to work as soon as possible,” a White House official said.

Of course there are lots of gossipy, judgmental stories about Bill’s busy schedule and eating habits like this one.

Friends: Bill Clinton Keeps “Frenetic” Pace

If only our current President had the energy and passion that Bill Clinton demonstrates!

In other news, the jobs bill isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans apparently–thanks to President Obama’s “bi-partisan obsession disorder.” Can someone please get him some treatment for that?

This afternoon, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus announced he’d reached accord with ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). They unveiled what was supposed to be a final jobs package. But the agreement didn’t sit well with many Democrats, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pulled it out of their hands, and announced he’d move ahead with a smaller bill….

Among other things, Baucus and Grassley said that jobs could only move forward if the Senate agreed to take up a bipartisan “reform” (a.k.a. slashing) of the estate tax.

It’s a shame we didn’t elect a President who would emulate Franklin D. Roosevelt instead of Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan. I came across this article yesterday by Steve Fraser that really sums up the stark contrasts between what FDR did to combat the Great Depression and what President Obama is failing to do in the current economic crisis. It’s a must-read!

The New Deal in Reverse: How the Obama Administration Ended Up Where Franklin Roosevelt Began

Buoyed by great expectations when he assumed office, Barack Obama has so far revealed himself to be an unfolding disappointment. On arrival, expectations were far lower for FDR, who was not considered extraordinary at all — until he actually did something extraordinary.

The great expectations of 2009 are, only a year later, beginning to smell like a pile of dead fish with new rhetoric — including populist-style attacks on villainous bankers that sound fake (or cynically pandering) when uttered by Obama’s brainiacs — layered on top of the pile like deodorant. Meanwhile, the country is suffering through a recovery that isn’t a recovery unless you happen to be a banker, and the administration stands by, too politically or intellectually inhibited or incapacitated to do much of anything about it. A year into “change we can believe in” and the new regime, once so flush with power and the promise of big doings, seems exhausted, vulnerable, and afraid. A year into the New Deal — indeed a mere 100 days into Roosevelt’s era — change, whether you believed in it or not, clearly had the wind at its back.

And here is another must-read article. Dakinikat posted a link to it yesterday–it’s all about how the religious right has managed to take over control of what kids learn in school about history, economics, politics–you name it–by taking over the powerful Texas school board.

How Christian Were the Founders?

…the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except [Ted] Kennedy, who was voted down.

Yesteday myiq2xu posted a terrific piece about class issues related to Michelle Obama’s new childhood obesity initiative, Fat is the New Dirty. A commenter on myiq’s post linked to information about a new fat-phobic policy that has been introduced by Whole Foods CEO and fighter against health care reform, John Mackey. From Jezebel:

Weigh Less, Pay Less: Whole Foods Offers Discount Based On BMI

Food Fight: A Whole Foods Honcho And The Politics Of American Eating

Whole Foods’ Employee BMI Discount Raises Legal Concerns

Billy Tauzin, bigtime lobbyist for PhRMA has resigned. This sounds like it could be a big story–I hope RD will weigh in on this one.

The announcement of Mr. Tauzin’s resignation is the latest unexpected fallout of the Republican upset in the Massachusetts Senate race, which abruptly transformed the health care overhaul from a near inevitability to a daunting cause.

Like almost every other seasoned Washington player, Mr. Tauzin bet the health care overhaul was an unstoppable train, so he wagered it was better to get on board early — only to watch it come to a screeching halt.

The trade group issued a news release on Thursday night confirming Mr. Tauzin’s departure, effective June 30. In the statement, Mr. Tauzin, a former House representative who is 66 and has survived intestinal cancer, said, “My health is excellent, and I look forward to exciting new challenges ahead.”

Under his direction, the trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, backed up its end of the deal by spending more than $100 million on ads to promote the overhaul.

But after the reform stalled, some industry leaders felt the trade group had gone too far giving concessions and could lose on some important legislative issues without gaining the political protection it had sought.

Finally, Nancy Pelosi is getting more and more unhappy with the guy she worked so hard to elect to the presidency–not that she’ll actually do anything about it….

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s increasingly public disagreements with President Barack Obama are a reflection of something deeper: the seething resentment some Democrats feel over what they see as cavalier treatment from a wounded White House.

For months, the California lawmaker has been pushing Obama hard in private while praising him in public. But now she’s being more open in her criticism, in part because she feels the White House was wrong — in the wake of the Democrats’ loss in Massachusetts — to push the Senate health care bill on the House when she knew there was no way it would pass.

Earlier this month, Pelosi criticized the president’s State of the Union call to exempt defense spending from a budget freeze. And in a White House meeting with leaders of both parties this week, she questioned the effectiveness of his plan to give small businesses tax breaks to hire workers.

So what are you all reading this morning? As always, please post your links in the comments.

HAVE A FABULOUS FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!